Using Duotrope to Track Fiction Submissions

For the past few months I’ve used Duotrope to track my fiction submissions to various markets. Previously I was using Google Sheets, with different sections of one large spreadsheet to track stories and submissions, markets, and responses. The sheet worked great for a long time, but once I had over twenty stories, hundreds of responses from publishers, and dozens of markets to track, the spreadsheet solution became unwieldy. I started to miss things, and in one cases submitted a story twice to the same publisher. I also started to submit fewer stories, simply because of the difficulty in using the spreadsheet. Time for a new solution!

My first instinct, being a database developer, was to build a submissions tracking database. That way I could easily query which markets I had submitted a particular story to, which markets might be appropriate for a given story, etc.

My second, better, instinct was to look for a database someone had already developed for the same purpose. A few minutes of research turned up Duotrope. I’d looked into Duotrope before as a potential tool for market research, but for some reason I wasn’t aware of it as a turnkey solution for comprehensive submissions tracking. I signed up for the free trial and quickly discovered it had all the features I needed. At only $5 per month, it would save me hundreds of hours I might spend developing my own, probably less effective solution.

All In

After I decided to commit, my first task was transferring all the information from my mega-spreadsheet. I manually entered my pieces (stories and novels), as well as all responses to date (acceptances and rejections) as well as a few non-responses and withdrawals. This took several sessions of a few hours each. The data-entry process and interface was fairly efficient and well-designed, and the work went quickly after I got into the flow. I entered 27 pieces and over 200 responses.

The Duotrope market database is very broad, and included almost everywhere and everyone I’d submitted to. When I did run into a market that wasn’t yet included, I filled out a simple form to add the record, and in both cases Duotrope added the market within 24 hours.

As soon as everything was in, I started checking out my data. I learned that my acceptance rate, just over 7%, was higher than average for people submitting to the same markets. I was surprised by this; I had recklessly spammed submissions for the entirely of 2016 (before my first story was published), and if I had guessed I would have put my acceptance rate at closer to 3 or 4%. Hopefully my acceptance rate will continue to go up over time (not necessarily because my writing is getting better — though I hope that it is — but because I now take more time to revise stories and do more market research).

Market Research

After all the data entry, I was feeling motivated to start revising and resubmitting both old and new short stories. Duotrope has a great search tool to find appropriate markets for your pieces. For example, here’s a typical search for me:
The results look like this:
In my manual spreadsheet, I’d tried to track most pro and semipro science fiction markets, but it became very difficult with many markets only open for small periods of time during the year, or taking long hiatuses.

Searching and Tracking Submissions

Duotrope has a great interface for searching tracking submissions. Here’s a screenshot:

My default setting is to only show pending responses. My current results look like this:

Required fields for submissions (after selecting the market and the piece) are Date Sent, Submission Status, and Submission Format, but there are a number of other fields if you want to get more granular. As software goes Duotrope feels complete, mature, and well-tested.

You Own Your Data

Two great features of Duotrope that I really appreciate:

1. If you pause your subscription, your data doesn’t go away. This is really nice. I might take a break from writing and submitting fiction for six months or more while writing my next novel, so it’s great that I can pause payment and access without losing any data.
2. You can easily export your data to Excel or csv for backup, viewing data while your subscription is paused, and/or transferring to another service if you choose to do so.

Conclusion

I’m really happy with Duotrope. It’s a great tool, well worth the $5 per month, and I’ll continue to use it and recommend it for the foreseeable future.

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